Joe Salai (6:47)
All of this is wonderful. You're so good at all this stuff, and yet there's this area of our life where we can be as equally mindful as equally mindful, which is our portfolio. And we're like, no, because Jail Collins said vtsax and chill. Now JL Collins and I, and I love that man, and so do you. We all love that man. Jail Collins will tell you you're going to be okay your entire life with VTSAX. And he's not wrong. He's 100. Right. And he will tell you to stay in VTSAX for your entire life. I had a long discussion also with his and my mutual friend Paul Merriman, who Paul takes J.L. collins One fund portfolio, sometimes two funds, right? Because sometimes he'll do a bond index as well. And Paul and I had a wonderful discussion where, you know, you look at Paul, Paul has a 4 fund portfolio, 5, 6, 8, 10. Which later in the episode and in the show notes, we'll link to that initial training that I did so people can go back through it and they can see me going through Paul Merriman's work in this area. He and I agreed that the goal is not more complexity. The goal is until you reach that first roughly $100,000, just focus on pouring more money, in which VTSax is perfect for. But all of us agree that when you get past 100,000, the juice becomes, quote, worth the squeeze if you have a little more mindfulness toward your portfolio allocation than J.L. collins says. Now, what's funny that Paul said to me, which I 100% agree with, is that JL Collins knows his audience really well. And much like Kramer stays on message, Dave Ramsey stays on message, Susie Orman stays on message, JL Collins stays on message. This can work your entire life. And he's not wrong where J.L. collins and I disagree. I've told him this. He and I have had wonderful conversations, the very thoughtful, fantastic conversations about this, that we disagree what to do when you reach $100,000. But my rationale for using the Efficient Frontier was never having more money. But I realized that in a community of people that have been, in my opinion, lulled to sleep with huge amounts of money to do a thing that's very suboptimal in a world where we're optimizing everything else, why are we ignoring this area just because one very smart, very likable man said that we should? So I love Paul Merriman's take that JL Knows his audience, our audience. I think when you look at the Afford Anything podcast and you look at stacking Benjamin, we're okay with this next level idea. The goal here, Jason, from my perspective of the Efficient frontier, if you're using the Efficient Frontier, Jason, just to make more money, here's what I think you should do. I think you should take all the work you've done on the Efficient Frontier and you should take it over to the garbage can and throw it in. Because what I really want you to do, if you want to be along the Efficient frontier, just for more money, I would go to Paul Merriman's research because he's on the Efficient Frontier, I would choose one of those portfolios. But let me tell you what that ignores. That for me, is the heart of this matter. Once our audience is receptive to the idea of doing something different than J.L. collins talks about, I've gone on record of saying that I don't like target day funds. I've also gone on record saying that when you're first starting out, you don't need a robo advisor What I truly like is when you have designed a portfolio yourself, the portfolio immediately becomes stickier. And I saw this in my own practice, Paula, and let me tell you what happened in. During my 16 years of financial planning, early on, I would make financial plans for people, and I came in this huge binder that I would put together. It was so mindful. And I would go to you, and you're my client, and I'm sitting across the desk from you, and we'd have this great chat, and then you would go, I like that one. I disagree with that one. I like that one. I'm not going to do that one like it was some kind of fricking buffet. And the frustration I had was even on the parts that you agreed with me, six months later, a year later, two years later, those parts of the plan would break down. Because it wasn't your plan, it was mine. And I knew the interlinking of these pieces of the plan, and you didn't. And because you didn't, you were just choosing the parts that sounded good, rejecting the others. Well, the reason I put that plan together was because it all dovetailed. You would put more money in the emergency fund so that you could raise the deductibles on your homeowner's insurance, on your car insurance. I would have people go, I don't want money sitting idly. So I'm not going to increase my emergency fund, but I am going to raise the deductible on my car insurance because I love paying less. Those two things are meant to go together, right?
